Wishmaster

I'm short on time and long on thoughts. What does that mean? It means that it's time for a bulleted list!

• Wishmaster is one of my favorite movies of all time, regardless of genre. It's an old-school monster mash that was made during the slasher boom of the late 90's. I love it because it's not that old, yet it's so far removed from what's happening in the horror genre today. It has a sense of humor without poking fun at itself. The characters are actually likable. There are no teenagers! But this is just the first bullet.
• When I first saw this flick, I was blown away by the gruesome special effects. Are you a gorehound? If so, you'll heart Wishmaster. In the opening sequence alone, we see a skeleton crawl out of its host. It seems like there is a creative kill every five minutes. Since this is a supernatural film, we're not limited to boneheaded stabbings and decapitations, although there is one nifty beheading by piano wire. Man, violence is cool.
• Tammy Lauren gives one of the best heroine performances of the 90's as the beleaguered Alex. Better than Neve Campbell in Scream. Better than Jamie Lee Curtis in Halloween: H20 (yes, I'm that bold). You can tell that she thought about how each line should be spoken. She was given terrific dialogue to work with, not that she needs a good script to sell a performance. Of course, Andrew Divoff rocks as The Djinn. Why didn't this film turn him into the next Bela Lugosi or the next Robert Englund? It's not his fault that Wishmaster 2: Evil Never Dies was less than stellar (review coming soon).
• The cameos...ah, the cameos. Nowadays, it's commonplace for a b-flick to have a docket of cult actors associated with it, but in 1997, it was a novel idea to have this many cameos in one film. Robert Englund, Reggie Bannister, the voice of Angus Scrimm, Tony Todd, Ted Raimi, Buck Flowers, Kane Hodder and several other genre staples appear before the camera (or in Scrimm's case, behind the camera).
• I might as well use this bullet to say that everything I haven't mentioned (lighting, pacing, score, etc.) is also up to snuff. The whole fucking production is a home run.
• Yes, the image I used is the Spanish poster. I just like the way it looks.

Is Wishmaster perfect? No, but I don't care. I'm giving it a perfect rating anyway. I watched it fifty times in Middle/High School, and it brings back a lot of warm memories. If I was granted three wishes, I would wish for three decent sequels instead of the ones that we're stuck with.